AIG: A Mess Of The Democrats Making

I know this will come as a complete surprise, but some Democrats have been lying to you. But before we get to that, let’s review.

AIG was deemed dangerously insolvent a few months ago, so insolvent that it required the government to step in and save it. It was one of the “too big to fail” companies. It got TARP funds. Then, as a part of the “stimulus” bill, signed into law under the Obama administration, an attempt was made to add a provision to strictly limit such payments as those now causing the faux outrage:

Around the same time, Congress and Obama’s team were passing up an opportunity to put in place strict laws to revoke bonuses from recipients of the $700 billion Wall Street bailout. In February, the Senate voted to add such a proposal to the economic recovery bill that cleared Congress, but in final closed-door talks on the measure, that provision was dropped in favor of limits that affect only future payments.

“There was a lot of lobbying against it and it died,” said Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who proposed the measure with Republican Sen. Olympia J. Snowe of Maine. He said Obama’s team is sending mixed messages on what will and won’t be tolerated on bonuses, with the president coming out strongly against excessive Wall Street rewards but top officials not following through.

“The president goes out and says this is not acceptable, and then some backroom deal gets cut to let these things get paid out anyway,” Wyden said. “They need to put this to bed once and for all.”

They also need to “put to bed once and for all” this nonsense that they “didn’t know” until a couple of days ago. And, of course, had anyone actually read the bill that they claimed was too important to delay, they’d have actually caught this, one assumes. But it appears, at least initially, that reading legislation before it is signed is just not a priority for this administration or Congress.

And surprise, surprise, we’re finding what they did pass sucks.

While administration officials insisted Tuesday that neither Obama nor Geithner learned of the impending bonus payments until last week, the problem wasn’t new. AIG’s plans to pay hundreds of millions of dollars were publicized last fall, when Congress started asking questions about expensive junkets the company had sponsored.

A November SEC filing by the company details more than $469 million in “retention payments” to keep prized employees.

Back then, Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, D-Md., began pumping Liddy for information on the bonuses and pressing him to scale them back.

Around the same time, outside lawyers hired by the Federal Reserve started reviewing the bonuses as part of a broader look at retention and compensation plans, according to government officials who spoke on condition of anonymity. The outside attorneys examined the possibility of making changes to the company plans — scaling them back, delaying them or rescinding them. They ultimately concluded that even if AIG’s bonuses were withheld, the company would probably be sued successfully by its employees and be forced to pay them, the officials said.

In January, Reps. Joseph E. Crowley of New York and Paul E. Kanjorski of Pennsylvania wrote to the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department pressing the administration to scrutinize AIG’s bonus plans and take steps against excessive payments.

“I at that point realized that we were going to have a backlash with regard to these bonuses,” Kanjorski said in an AP interview. In a meeting with Liddy later that month, he said he told the AIG chief that “all hell would break loose if we didn’t find a way to inform the public … and that we should take every step to put that information out there so we wouldn’t have the shock.”

And of course, Kanjorski is right. This is a “distraction”, as Rahm Emanuel is labeling it, that the administration could have avoided had the Treasury Secretary been on top of it and the President had exerted even a bit of leadership. Instead, both are in extreme cover-up mode. And as more and more info comes out, the time-line of events they issued has less and less credibility.

This wasn’t something that just emerged as a problem last Tuesday as Geithner is attempting to claim. This has been known and waved off for months. And that includes the provision that was going to be inserted in the “stimulus” package but died due to apparent Democratic lobbying.

2 Responses to AIG: A Mess Of The Democrats Making

But… but… TAO’s teleprompter told him to say said just today that he and the rest of the democrat scum, unlike certain other (unnamed) people, have wanted to limit executive pay and compensation for YEARS, even before the financial crisis. If only they’d been in control of the Congress at ANY time during the past few years!